Business improvement district outlined

If central Pueblo property owners want a business improvement district, a consultant recommends a trial run of a modest-sized district funded by a special tax assessment rather than a property tax.

Executives with Denver-based Progressive Urban Management Associates on Tuesday outlined their initial recommendations for the kind of district that would work best for central Pueblo.

The presentation came at the latest public outreach meeting for the proposed Pueblo City Center Business Improvement District.

The meeting at El Pueblo History Museum drew about a half-dozen property owners — some in support of the district, others opposed — as well as representatives of the City Center Partnership and Pueblo Urban Renewal Authority.

Brad Segal, president of Progressive Urban Management Associates, said his group continues to gather public feedback ahead of issuing a final analysis on whether central Pueblo businesses would support such a district.

A similar initiative was shelved in 1998 due to inadequate support among property owners, he noted.

To gain the most buy-in from property owners and the most bang for their tax bucks, Segal said the consultant group recommends the district take the following shape:

Given the large number of property tax exemptions that exist in central Pueblo for nonprofits and others, the district should be funded by a special tax assessment based on property square footage. No property owner would be exempt, he said.

The tax should expire after five or 10 years unless extended by another vote of the property owners.

Each property owner in the district would pay 5.1 cents per square feet of land and 5.1 cents per square feet of building, or about $300 a year for a 3,000-square-foot building site.

The tax would raise an estimated $300,000 a year for advocacy, marketing, new business development, beautification and safety programs in the proposed district that would encompass Downtown, Union Avenue and Mesa Junction.

Segal cautioned against any one of the three neighborhoods trying to go it alone in creating its own district. “You’ve got to get a critical mass of funds . . . to do visible things,” he said.

Governance would fall to a nine-member board apportioned by the percentage of economic activity in each neighborhood: four members from Downtown, three from Union Avenue, one from Mesa Junction and one at large.

A detailed copy of the recommendations are available from City Center Partnership.

Segal said none of the detail work will matter unless businesses in central Pueblo come together in support of taxing themselves to fund collective improvements.

In support of business improvement districts, he presented a chart that detailed the ongoing work of 13 similar districts in other Colorado cities, including Grand Junction, Durango, Colorado Springs, a half-dozen Denver neighborhoods and several Denver suburbs.

The yearly taxes collected by the districts range from less than $200,000 to $4.9 million in downtown Denver.

“I think this is the fundamental decision: Are we better off today as a bunch of individuals . . . or is there some added value to do something collectively? . . . All of these other cities have found value,” Segal said.

To create the district, central Pueblo property owners would need to petition Pueblo City Council to create the district and put any tax question to a mail-ballot vote of all of the property owners in the district.